A former Waterloo police officer who was suspended with pay for three years sent an email to police mocking them for paying him while he golfed, travelled and took a course that would allow him to pursue a career as a firefighter.

Craig Markham, 37, sent the email on March 27, 2015 and thanked the Waterloo Regional Police Service for a “nice gift.”

“I was able to sit home, take courses, travel, and play lots of golf and get paid a first class pay check, receive full benefits, and a full pension for the last three years,” Markham wrote in the email.

Waterloo Region Police Chief Bryan Larkin released the email at a police services board meeting last week and called Markham’s situation an abuse of the system.

Waterloo Region Police ServicesCraig Markham wrote an email to Waterloo police thanking them for paying him while he was suspended.

Markham closes the email by saying he’s “down south until the end of April playing golf and hanging out on the beach using some of that WRPS sick bank payout.”

He also thanked Waterloo police for having “opened up other doors” and paying him to “sit back and watch.”

Markham, who worked for 11 years as an officer, pleaded guilty to breach of trust and was given a conditional discharge in October 2012.

I was able to sit home, take courses, travel, and play lots of golf and get paid a first class pay check, receive full benefits and a full pension for the past three years

While working at the front desk in 2011, an acquaintance texted him to say her boyfriend was in custody. Markham pulled up the man’s file and spoke to him in his holding cell. The man was suspected to have ties with the Hells Angels, though they were never proven.

Markham then copied confidential information into an email and sent it to another acquaintance.

Police suspended Markham with pay in February 2012 and he amassed nearly $350,000 in salary. Markham, a former constable, was forced to resign after a formal hearing in 2014. He appealed the process and continued to receive his salary until the case was dismissed by a civilian commission. Markham quit on Feb. 18 of this year.

I am down south until the end of April playing golf and hanging out on the beach using some of that WRPS sick bank payout until I start my new career May 1st

Ontario is the only province where officers who are facing charges still receive their pay.

Larkin said the email will be sent to politicians in an effort to gain traction to have the policy changed.

Pam Machado, a counsel for the York Regional Police Association, represented Markham through 2014. Machado wrote in an emailed statement that suspension with pay exists to ensure the presumption of innocence. She said 97 per cent of complaints against officers in Ontario are later dismissed as unsubstantiated.

Machado said the debate shouldn’t be focused around cost as “there is nothing preventing police services from keeping the officers at work and in use (administratively).

Suspending officers without pay, Machado said, “will only lead to an increase in the already grim reality that first responders are faced with.”

“At the end of the day, this debate should not center around one email that was clearly sent in a moment of frustration,” Machado said. “The debate is about how best to support our officers who have been “damaged” by their experiences on the job.”

Dozens of Canadian Hells Angels took their death-head-emblazoned vests to Greece this month for an international biker parade and convention, but at least three of them didn’t return.

Dan Cassidy/Submitted/ Postmedia NewsAt least nine B.C. Hells Angels joined other gang members at a recent summit meeting in Athens. On the way, they soaked up the sights and culture in Paris and then some it appears, participated in an attempted murder.

A trio of full-patch Alberta Hells Angels are in jail in Greece after being arrested last week following the near-fatal beating of a Greek man.

At least nine B.C. Hells Angels also attended the international meeting, in which more than 2,000 Hells Angels from 500 chapters descended on Athens. Some of the B.C. Hells Angels stopped along the way in Paris to do some sightseeing at Notre Dame Cathedral.

The three Alberta Angels made a court appearance last Friday. The 41-year-old man they allegedly beat up is on life support.

The Canadian government is providing consular services, spokesman Francois Lasalle confirmed, without identifying the people involved.

“We are aware of reports of Canadian citizens detained in Greece. Canadian officials are in contact with the individuals and providing consular assistance as required,” Lasalle said in an email to The Vancouver Sun.

“Due to the Privacy Act, further details on this case cannot be released.”

Mike Tucker of the Alberta Law Enforcement Response Team said two of the Hells Angels arrested are from the Westridge chapter in Edmonton and one is from the Nomads, which are based in Red Deer.

Tucker said his agency is working with Greek officials.

Ontario Provincial Police Det.-Staff Sgt. Len Isnor said it’s not known yet what charges the three Canadians may face.

“All I know it was an assault. How that assault took place, I couldn’t tell you,” said Isnor, a leading Canadian expert on the Hells Angels.

Isnor said he has been liaising with his European counterparts about the world gathering, an annual event, and the involvement of Canadian Hells Angels.

“We speak back and forth. We knew everything that was going on,” he said.

Isnor said he doesn’t have the final tally of Canadian bikers that attended.

Every chapter in Canada — and there are 31 chapters — has to send at least one representative and some send two because they don’t like to have one guy travelling alone

“Every chapter in Canada — and there are 31 chapters — has to send at least one representative and some send two because they don’t like to have one guy travelling alone,” Isnor said.

There are nine B.C. chapters.

The week before the meeting, two Hells Angels from the Mission chapter were photographed outside Notre Dame in Paris, admiring the cathedral’s stone angels.

They are there basically on vacation, but they do their business

“They are there basically on vacation, but they do their business,” Isnor said.

He said the “world run” happens once a year and includes a procession with bikers from around the world riding their Harleys through the street with their country’s logo on their backs.

Dan Cassidy/Submitted/ Postmedia NewsAnother tourist snapped this picture of a man in a Hells Angels jacket takes in Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris, France, where the bikers stopped on their way to a mass gathering in Athens, Greece.

“It is in a different country every year,” said Isnor, who has attended world runs in the past. “They also have what’s called their world meeting.”

Only Hells Angels executive members from each country attend the meeting, Isnor explained.

“World meetings are to resolve world motions. A lot of motions come forward that would change the constitution and the way they do business on the surface,” Isnor said.

But don’t expect the world run to be held anywhere in Canada or the U.S.

Isnor said Canadian immigration law “doesn’t allow any members of a criminal organization into Canada, so they can’t have a world run in Canada.”

“They can’t have a world run any longer in the United States also because they also created a law similar to what we have in Canada that won’t allow international members of the Hells Angels into the United States.”

1. Greece gets bankruptcy, and bikers too

Greg Pender/Postmedia

This is just what Greece needs — crazy Canadian bikers beating up on people: According to the Vancouver Sun, dozens of Canadian Hells Angels headed to Greece this month for an international biker parade and convention, where at least three of them distinguished themselves by ending up in jail. Three Alberta Hells Angels are behind bars after being arrested following the near-fatal beating of a Greek man. At least nine B.C. Hells Angels also attended the international meeting of 2,000 Hells Angels from 500 chapters. The three from Alberta made a court appearance last Friday. The 41-year-old man they allegedly beat up is on life support.

2. Battle at the top of the CRTC

THE CANADIAN PRESS/Sean KilpatrickCTRC Chairman Jean-Pierre Blais .

Sounds like these guys really don’t like each other: A dispute at the top tier of the CRTC is getting totally out of hand. It pits CRTC chairman Jean-Pierre Blais against Ontario regional commissioner Raj Shoan. Shoan reportedly submitted travel plans that included trips to Las Vegas, Amsterdam, New York City and Mont Tremblant, adding up to $78,000, and Blais refused to approve them. Shoan cut the list to $48,000 and invited Blais to pick the ones he’d approve. When Shoan said he planned to take the dispute to the PMO, Blais responded that: “No reasonable person could interpret (your statements) as anything but threatening, specifically with the intent to bully me into the outcome you want.…”

Boys, boys …take it outside. We have cellphone bill disputes to deal with here.

3. North Korea may be starving. Or not.

EPA / KCNANorth Korean leader Kim Jong-un. If the country is starving, he doesn't show it.

There seems to be some uncertainty as to whether North Korea is in danger of mass hunger due to the worst drought in 100 years. Food is an issue at the best of times in North Korea and it’s unusual that it would draw international attention to the extent of the drought. (They usually don’t like to admit life is anything but perfect in the world’s most malevolent one-man state). A U.S. State Department official said he’s heard the drought reports but didn’t know of any plans to respond. China says it’s willing to help if North Korea asks for it. No one believes much of what North Korea says anyway, so it’s hard to know the truth.

4. Rape clinic plans “gender equality” care for men

A hospital in Stockholm is set to become the first in the country (or anywhere?) with an emergency department specifically for male rape victims. The clinic at Södersjukhuset is scheduled to open this autumn. Södersjukhuset (try and say that fast, three times) already has the largest emergency care unit in the Nordic region and runs a round-the-clock, walk-in clinic for women and girls who have been sexually assaulted. Now it says it will also admit men and boys as part of a strategy to ensure “gender equal” emergency care for rape victims of both sexes.

5. And they all want houses in Vancouver

FileAsia is in the money

The Economist says Asia is richer than Europe for the first time and is catching up to North America. It says Asian wealth is expected to reach $75 trillion by 2019, compared to $63 trillion (give or take) in North America. And although the U.S. still has by far the most millionaires, Asia created more new ones last year than anywhere else — 62% of the total. The main reason is China: It will account for 70% of Asia’s growth between now and 2019, and will overtake North America as the Big Kahuna by 2021.

6. Rob Ford hearts Donald Trump. Perfect

File: Peter J. Thompson/National Post Former Toronto Mayor Rob Ford.

Rob Ford says he’s a big fan of Donald Trump as a presidential candidate. How great is that? I bet David Letterman wishes he hadn’t quit before he heard about it. The jokes just make themselves up.

7. Scandal at the Senate. Stop me if you’ve heard this

THE CANADIAN PRESS/Sean KilpatrickLiberal senator James Cowan is among senators RCMP will examine.

The Star says the RCMP plans to review all 30 senators flagged for questionable spending in the auditor general’s review, not just the nine the AG separated out for special attention. The list includes Senate Speaker Leo Housakos, recently named to the top job by Stephen Harper; Conservative government leader Claude Carignan and Senate Liberal caucus leader James Cowan.

VANCOUVER — More than two dozen of the longshoremen unloading container ships on the docks of Metro Vancouver are Hells Angels, their associates, other gangsters or people with serious criminal records, a Vancouver Sun investigation has found.

The infiltration of gangsters and criminals into the port workforce is perpetuated by a longtime employment practice that allows existing union members to nominate friends, relatives and associates when new jobs become available.

Police say organized crime maintains this foothold on the waterfront for strategic purposes — so drugs and other contraband can be smuggled in some of the more than 1.5 million containers that pass through the four container terminals at Port Metro Vancouver every year.

Just over three per cent of containers arriving here are checked by the Canada Border Services Agency.

“It is a concern to us. We feel that a lot of the illegal drugs that come into this country come in through our ports,” said Det.-Staff. Sgt. Len Isnor, the country’s top law enforcement expert on the Hells Angels.

We feel that a lot of the illegal drugs that come into this country come in through our ports

Isnor, who works for the Ontario Provincial Police, has testified at several major B.C. cases involving the biker gang.

Isnor said the Hells Angels have maintained a foothold in Canada’s three largest ports — Vancouver, Montreal and Halifax — for the past 30 years.

“So as far as the ports are concerned, it’s the whole success of the Hells Angels.”

While airports have tightened security in the post-9/11 world, Metro Vancouver docks remain relatively porous, allowing people linked to organized crime, and even some convicted of international drug smuggling, to work on the waterfront.

The Sun has identified at least six full-patch Hells Angels who are active members of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union.

Some have worked on the docks for years, like Al DeBruyn, a senior White Rock Hells Angel who started in 1981 — two years before the HA was set up in B.C.

Other Hells Angels joined the longshoremen more recently. Rob Alvarez of the elite Nomads chapter and Kelowna Angel Damiano Dipopolo started on May 24, 2012. West Point Hells Angel Ryan Sept started just last year, nominated by another full-patch member of his chapter.

Bikers aren’t the only people with links to crime working on the waterfront.

Others who police have publicly identified as gangsters, such as Mani Buttar and Bobby Tajinder Gill, are also longshoremen, as are some of their associates.

Buttar has been a member of Local 502, a Vancouver local of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union, since 1998. The local provides hundreds of workers a day to Fraser Surrey docks and Deltaport. And Buttar, whose two brothers died in gangland shootings, is on his union’s executive committee despite a lengthy criminal history.

Gill is in jail after police issued a warrant for him several months ago on some outstanding charges.

The Sun has documented 27 active longshoremen with gang or criminal links from various sources of information, including public records and union membership lists.

That number doesn’t include the “inactive” members of the union who are also Hells Angels — East End president John Bryce, Nomads Angel Gino Zumpano, Haney member Vince Brienza, West Point member Larry Amero and former Vancouver president Norm Krogstad.

ILWU national president Mark Gordienko agreed to be interviewed for The Vancouver Sun series. But he cancelled without explanation the day before the interview. He also declined through a spokesman to answer written questions for the Sun.

Police admit there’s a serious problem when criminals and gangsters have the ability to move drugs and other contraband through Port Metro Vancouver.

A series of government and police reports about organized crime on the waterfront and obtained by the Sun show authorities have been documenting concerns for two decades.

“The presence of numerous members of organized crime groups (OCGs) as dockside employees of the Port of Vancouver, coupled with the ability to access the port by members of OCGs employed in the trucking industry creates a high-risk for smuggling at the port,” says a September 2010 internal Border Services Agency report.

The only way someone can get hired as a longshoreman in British Columbia is by the ILWU putting their name forward.

Port Metro Vancouver then issues a basic port pass. A criminal record check is not required, yet the pass allows wide access to the tens of thousands of containers stacked behind locked gates in Vancouver, Surrey and Delta.

Port Metro vice-president Peter Xotta said he was unaware of how many port pass holders are Hells Angels or others with criminal links.

“We certainly don’t have that level of detail,” he said.

“My sense of it is it is much more difficult for this (criminal) activity to occur on the waterfront. That’s not to say that there aren’t elements or individuals on the waterfront and in other parts of working society in Vancouver that aren’t involved in some sort of activity that could give rise to concern.”

Andy Smith, president of the B.C. Maritime Employers Association, said his agency is aware of the Hells Angels and others with gang connections on the docks.

“Yes, we are aware of who they are. They make no secret of it,” he said.

Yes, we are aware of who they are. They make no secret of it

But he also said his association’s role is to ensure longshore workers are properly trained, not worry about their criminal histories.

“It is not within my mandate,” Smith said. “We are a service provider to the industry — primarily to labour relations and training and secondarily in terms of government relations and social outreach. In any of those arenas, we have yet to see a situation where someone’s criminal associations or participation in the Hells Angels, or whatever, has been an issue.”

Some of the thousands of dock workers in B.C. also possess a higher-security Transportation Security Clearance pass issued by Transport Canada that allows them inside restricted zones on the waterfront.

Workers are screened for links to organized crime and criminal records before those passes, known as TSC, are issued.

But Smith said the restricted zones at the port are small compared to the areas accessed with the general pass.

“If you are talking about access of workers to long rows of containers which are in lightly populated work areas day or night, the TSC doesn’t come into it,” he said.

Guy Morgan, director of security and screening programs for Transport Canada, wouldn’t comment specifically on the Hells Angels or other criminals working on the waterfront. But he said his agency does screen several ways for links to organized crime before issuing the TSC passes.

He suggested the Hells Angels on the Sun’s list don’t have the high-security passes — though he wouldn’t say so directly or comment on any individuals.

Morgan said it’s unfair to compare the two as there are also areas at the airport where workers don’t need the high-security clearance.

“I think that the marine transportation security regulations have set out very robust security requirements for the vessels, the ports, the marine facilities and the purpose of those regulations is to enhance the international framework for the deterrence and prevention and detection of acts that may threaten security in the marine port,” Morgan said.

“We are continuously reviewing and enhancing our marine security regime and that includes our security regulations, our standards, our procedures in order to maintain that security environment.”

Senator Colin Kenny, who has been outspoken on national security issues, was in Vancouver last fall talking to Port Metro Vancouver officials about security.

He thinks more should be done to deal with organized crime on the waterfront, an issue that crops up every few years but never gets addressed.

But Kenny doesn’t expect a clampdown on criminalized port workers any time soon, given the RCMP is reassigning hundreds of officers across the country to work on terrorism cases. Many of those resources have been taken from organized crime cases. That, said Kenny, is short-sighted.

“We have made the point consistently that if people from organized crime can get in, terrorists will follow,” said Kenny, who sits on the Senate’s National Security and Defence committee.

“Generally speaking, there is a huge lack of interest on the part of almost everybody.”

Yet there has been two decades of damning documentation about the problem.

A 2012 Transport Canada obtained by the Sun under the Access to Information Act identified the potential “exploitation of the commercial marine transportation system to smuggle narcotics from the Americas to Canada’s Pacific Coast.”

Most of the report was censored for security reasons, including the executive summary.

But the section titles alone are revealing.

The section called “Methamphetamine and Precursor Chemicals” is three pages long — all blanked out.

It’s followed by a section titled Drug Trafficking Organizations, about half of which has been removed.

Details of Mexican cartels, including the Sinaloa, Los Zetas, Knights Templar and the South Pacific Cartel were provided in the report between blanked out sections about “port seizures” and strategic implications.

The report acknowledges that Mexican cartels use ships to transport their drugs to Canada and elsewhere.

Those cartels already have connections in Vancouver, as revealed by the Sun in a recent series.

The 2010 CBSA report, also obtained under the Access to Information Act, said that while the Mafia and Hells Angels “have exerted the most significant criminal influence at major Canadian marine ports, many other international OCGs, including Asian, East Indian, Persian, Middle Eastern, Eastern European and local groups have developed a presence in Canada.”

“Although the number of seizures in the marine mode are low, relative to the air and land modes, the quantities seized in a given enforcement action are typically very high,” the report says.

CBSA seizures at Port Metro Vancouver over the past five years prove that point. Between 2010 and 2014 more than half a tonne of cocaine was discovered by CBSA searches of containers arriving at Port Metro Vancouver. Almost two tonnes of the party drug ketamine and more than 20,000 litres of liquid precursor chemicals used in the production of meth were also seized.

“Vancouver marine will continue to pose a high risk for the smuggling of precursor chemicals into Canada from China and India,” the CBSA report says.

“However, Prince Rupert may increasingly become the port of entry for precursor chemical shipments due to expansion in marine container commerce and/or a deliberate effort by smugglers to direct shipments through Prince Rupert, in the hope of evading seizure of the shipments.”

The CBSA clearly links the smuggling to the Hells Angels and other gangsters working at the port “in key positions — longshoremen, equipment operators, foremen and truck drivers.”

“Joint forces operations by Canadian law enforcement agencies, which have included the CBSA, have succeeded in dismantling smuggling operations and temporarily disrupting the movement of drugs, cigarettes and other contraband. However since OCGs are adept at quickly re-establishing their presence at the ports, these successes are typically shortlived.”

The 2010 report echoes two others prepared by police in the mid 1990s and obtained from Sun sources.

A 1995 report done by the Criminal Intelligence Section of B.C. says “Hells Angels have numerous members in the longshoremen’s union, employed in a variety of port jobs. This has provided them with the direct means of transporting narcotics and other drugs internationally.”

And it says B.C. Hells Angels have close connections to the Mafia, or “traditional organized crime.”

“Hells Angels employees have access to a variety of ports in various locations, access to vessels, containers, scheduling and their own trucking companies to load and unload product. The Hells Angels East End chapter’s relationship with traditional organized crime not only serves in expanding the parameters for economic opportunities through illegal means but unites these two organizations in a partnership of strength,” the report says.

“Organized crime access and control of ports for movement of drugs and other illegal products is in place.”

A 1994 report titled Organized Crime and the Port of Vancouver describes an environment on the docks that could have come straight out of the classic film On the Waterfront.

The report, prepared by the now-disbanded Ports Canada Police, said “the Port of Vancouver has been extensively infiltrated by organized crime elements and is also extensively manipulated from the outside by local and international organized criminals.”

“For many years, it was known that a number of longshoremen on the port were affiliated with the Hells Angels. Numerous times, thefts of containers and their goods had been attributed to the Angels and their inside men. Unfortunately, a detailed list of these past incidents would take up too much room,” the PCP report said.

“Angels are among the first to board arriving ships. They unload goods, place them for storage, load them onto trucks and prepare the necessary documents for shipping.”

They also bully co-workers to prevent complaints about them, it said.

“They intimidate fellow workers, both on the docks and in the offices, with threats of violence and death, and have successfully imposed a forced code of silence on the port.”

Smith said he hasn’t heard reports of intimidation of other workers by Hells Angels or others linked to organized crime since he started at the BCMEA in 2007.

“We have never received a complaint,” Smith said. “I am aware of one instance that occurred before I got here.”

In that case, a full-patch Hells Angels wore his “colours” — the leather vest with the patch on the back — to work.

“The action taken to get him to take his colours down was initiated by an ILWU official at the time,” Smith said.

He said he has also “never been contacted by any federal official with concerns about gang activity at this port.”

“They haven’t raised those issues with me for which, quite frankly, I’m thankful. I don’t know what I would do about them.”

Related

Xotta said Port Metro works closely with the CBSA, the RCMP’s National Port Enforcement Team, local police agencies in the Lower Mainland and Transport Canada.

“The port has primary responsibility around keeping the port and surrounding waters safe for navigation and for the trade mandate that we have,” he said.

“Our specific responsibility in terms of security is really linked to a function of the collaboration between those agencies.”

Four years ago, Port Metro opened an Operations Centre in Canada Place, where workers can monitor video images from 400 cameras strategically placed all over port properties. They can also alert law enforcement if they see a problem, as they recently did with the chemical fire at the Centerm container terminal.

“Some of them (the cameras) are incredibly powerful. We’ve got lines of sight for both day and night vision on the port’s patrol vessels,” Xotta said. “We’ve invested in two new patrol vessels in the last year. These vessels are … significantly faster vessels than we had previously.”

New high-tech security gates have been installed in most areas and will be put in soon Roberts’ Bank, where Deltaport — Canada’s busiest container port — is located.

Xotta said that “unlike in generations past — (the gates) create a level of security and visibility around the ports so that if there is criminal behaviour happening by any member of the waterfront community, it’s a little more difficult to come and go then it might have been many years ago.”

Asked if criminals or Hells Angels should be working at the port at all, Xotta said: “It’s a question for the RCMP and Transport Canada.”

Smith doesn’t see clamping down on bikers or other criminals on the docks as the solution to preventing illicit cargo from getting through the port.

“If there are methodologies by which to get product through the port in containers or otherwise — if somebody thinks, well, raising the bar for people to come and work here is going to slow that down — I don’t think so. There are always vulnerable people,” Smith said.

“There are always people who are ethically or morally challenged. And if it wasn’t people with records or who are members of groups which are deemed to be not acceptable, they will always find people to do this work for them.”

Francis Boucher, who walked out of a Montreal jail on Monday, was back in custody early Friday after turning himself in to authorities. The son of former Hells Angels boss Maurice (Mom) Boucher surrendered while accompanied by his lawyer, Dimitrios Strapatsas.

Boucher, 39, a former member of the Rockers, a Hells puppet gang, had walked out of Montreal’s Bordeaux jail in broad daylight Monday.

He was serving a 117-day sentence for uttering death threats against police officers — a sentence due to be completed at the end of May.

Boucher and his lawyer arrived at the entrance to Bordeaux at 11:50 p.m. Thursday and surrendered. At 1:30 a.m. Friday he was formally arrested by the Sûreté du Québec.

THE CANADIAN PRESS/Ryan RemiorzBordeaux Prison is seen on Tuesday morning, March 24, 2015 after Francis Boucher was mistakenly released just weeks into a 117-day sentence.

He was taken in custody to another detention centre which the SQ declined to identify.

Boucher is expected to appear in court later Friday to face at least one charge related to his leaving the facility.

Boucher was previously sentenced to 10 years behind bars for gangsterism, conspiracy to commit murder and drug-trafficking.

On Wednesday, Strapatsas had made a public appeal to his client, urging him to surrender as quickly as possible.

There has been speculation Boucher was able to leave the jail with help from someone on the inside but Strapatsas said Wednesday that he did not believe that was the case.

THE CANADIAN PRESS/Ryan RemiorzFrancis Boucher is back behind barbed wire after he was mistakenly released early from prison.

During Wednesday’s question period in the national assembly, the opposition asked Public Security Minister Lise Theriault why Boucher was on the run.

She replied that two inquiries were underway — one administrative and the other by provincial police.

A Quebec prison guard was suspended the day after Boucher left the jail.

Maurice Boucher was a household name in the late 1990s and early 2000s during a bloody battle between the Hells and the Rock Machine.

“Mom” Boucher was sentenced to life in prison in 2002 after being convicted of two counts of first-degree murder in the killings of prison guards that were aimed at destabilizing the justice system.

Postmedia NewsFrancis Boucher was serving a 117-day sentence for having uttered death threats against police officers that was to finish at the end of May when he walked out of Montreal’s Bordeaux Prison on March 23

Quebec provincial police are continuing their search today for the son of former Hells Angels kingpin Maurice (Mom) Boucher after he left a Montreal jail prematurely.

Francis Boucher was serving a 117-day sentence for having uttered death threats against police officers — a sentence due to be completed at the end of May.

Sûreté du QuébecFrancis Boucher

The 39-year-old Boucher walked out of Bordeaux jail on Monday morning.

It still isn’t clear whether his escape is down to an administrative gaffe or the result of an inside job.

Public Security Minister Lise Theriault said in Quebec City today it appears as though Boucher was able to get out of Bordeaux with the help of what she called a “stratagem.”

Boucher, a former member of the Rockers, a Hells affiliate, was previously sentenced to 10 years for gangsterism, conspiracy to commit murder and drug-trafficking.

Theriault reiterated on Tuesday that Boucher’s escape was “inexcusable” and that the union representing prison guards is co-operating with the provincial police investigation.

On Monday night, officials had different takes on just how Boucher left the prison.

Marc Lyrette, the deputy director of the correctional system in Montreal, said he was released due to “what appears to be an administrative error.”

But Louise Quintin, a spokeswoman for Quebec’s Public Security Department, said Boucher used a “trick” to leave the prison and that his ecape couldn’t be blamed on an administrative error. She did not elaborate.

Theriault has ordered an administrative investigation to determine just how Boucher left the facility in addition to a police probe into the circumstances surrounding the event.

Quebec provincial police Sgt. Gino Pare said Tuesday it’s too early to say exactly how Boucher managed to walk out of jail.

John Mahoney / Postmedia NewsMaurice Boucher, right, outside the funeral of a friend in 2000.

Boucher’s latest sentence stems from an arrest last November at an east-end Montreal bar where he was intoxicated and bothering patrons.

When called to the scene, police told him to leave. That is when he allegedly threatened them as well as revealing his father’s identity.

Maurice Boucher was sentenced to life in prison in 2002 after being convicted of two counts of first-degree murder in the killings of prison guards meant to destabilize the justice system.

Boucher’s release is the latest in a series of gaffes involving Quebec’s detention facilities.

Earlier this year, Shamy Saint-Jean, 19, was able to leave the Riviere-des-Prairies detention centre after posing as his brother, who was scheduled to be released.

Saint-Jean turned himself in to Montreal police accompanied by his lawyer in mid-February and faces new charges stemming from the escape.

Quebec prison facilities have also come under scrutiny after being the subject of two wild jailbreaks involving helicopters to free inmates.

Last June, three inmates escaped from the Orsainville detention centre, located near Quebec City, using a chopper to escape.

And in March 2013, two inmates escaped in similar fashion from a detention centre in Saint-Jerome.

The StarPhoenix has conducted a series of interviews with a source who has extensive knowledge of the Project Forseti investigation, as well as the inner workings of the Saskatoon Hells Angels, Fallen Saints and other groups.

The source spoke on condition of anonymity. All details in the following story come from that source, unless attributed to earlier news reports, police, or other sources.

One morning late last summer, more than a dozen members of the Hells Angels and Fallen Saints motorcycle clubs rode out of town together. Through a steady rain, they headed north on Highway 11. Their journey ended just before noon at the Prince Albert clubhouse of fellow bikers, the Saints and Sinners.

This was no social call.

The P.A. club was hosting a key meeting of the Saskatchewan Motorcycle Coalition, the governing council of the province’s outlaw bikers.

The lunch meeting, chaired by a member of the Iron Workers Motorcycle Club, was called to order. The only major item on the itinerary was a request to make the Fallen Saints a full “three-patch” club. The privilege to decorate a club’s leather jacket with three patches – the logo, club name and city – can only be granted by the council.

Although the Saskatoon Hells Angels were clearly backing the Fallen Saints, speakers at the meeting expressed almost unanimous opposition. A speech from Fallen Saints leader Mark Nowakoski had no effect.

The coalition also chafed at the unprecedented Hells Angels proposal that the Fallen Saints would need only one year of probation to qualify for patches. Most clubs, including the Hells Angels, forced prospects to wait at least five years.

Even the Regina Hells Angels spoke out against it, calling it a “rush job.”

The Saskatoon Hells Angels needed a yes vote. They were desperate to enlist a new army of foot soldiers to fend off their hated rivals, the Outlaws, who had moved into Saskatoon and were gaining strength, thanks to a partnership with an aboriginal street gang.

That’s when a Hells Angels leader decided he’d heard enough. He rose from one of the centre seats in the oval-shaped table arrangement and looked around the room.

“These are my friends,” he said, gesturing to the Fallen Saints seated next to him.

“This is gonna happen. If anyone has a problem, come here and talk to me about it.”

No one said a word. The Fallen Saints briefly left the room while the voting occurred. By a unanimous show of hands, the Fallen Saints were approved as a threepatch motorcycle club. They were welcomed back to the room with shouts of “Congratulations, brother!” and loud applause.

The Hells Angels in Saskatoon and around the world have always said they are simply a group of men with a common interest in riding motorcycles. Last month, through their lawyer, Morris Bodnar, they denied any connection with the Fallen Saints.

Neither Bodnar nor a spokesman for the Hells Angels could be reached for comment this week. A lawyer for one of the Fallen Saints said he’d pass along a request for an interview, but no one responded.

The idea to create the Fallen Saints was hatched in late 2013 over drinks in a Saskatoon bar.

The bar owner, who has hosted both parties and formal meetings of Hells Angels, the Terror Squad street gang and later the Fallen Saints, sat with a pair of Hells Angels. One was a longtime Saskatoon member who has since been charged with cocaine trafficking and assault. The other was a recent arrival from Quebec, a veteran of the bloody biker wars in that province who’d served a decade in prison for various offences.

Richard Marjan/The Starphoenix A number of police operations took place in and around Saskatoon including this one at the Hell's Angels clubhouse on Avenue Q South in Holiday Park.

The three men chatted about the growing threat posed by the Outlaws. Formed in Illinois in 1935 – more than a decade before the Hells Angels was founded in California – the Outlaws’ reach is also global. Their website notes recent chapters opened in Serbia and the Philippines. The group’s Canadian website lists chapters in Ontario and Newfoundland, but none yet in Saskatchewan.

Like the Hells Angels, they say they’re simply a group of men with a common passion for riding motorcycles.

The Outlaws, however, had teamed up with another recent arrival to Saskatoon, Deuce – a gang of largely aboriginal street youth founded in Manitoba, according to the source.

The marriage served two purposes for the Outlaws. First, the Outlaws now had an army of street kids to deal imported cocaine, methamphetamine and other drugs.

Although the majority of Hells Angels weren’t personally involved in drug dealing, prostitution and illegal firearms, they all knew their power depended on controlling those who did, the source said.

The bar owner and the Hells Angels began recruiting. Within a few weeks, several high profile criminals had agreed to start the new gang loyal to the Hells Angels.

They held their own meeting to discuss a name, logo and constitution. After pondering “Devil’s Posse” and “Devil’s Crew,” they settled on Fallen Saints.

Nowakoski was named president and others became vice-president, secretary, treasurer, sergeant-atarms and road captain. They later discovered another law-abiding motorcycle club of military and police veterans already used the name, but decided to keep it.

Then, to get the official blessing of the Saskatoon Hells Angels, they attended a weekly meeting known as “church” at the Hells Angels’ Holiday Park-area clubhouse.

Not long afterward, the two clubs rode to Prince Albert together and obtained the approval of the provincial council.

“The Fallen Saints were formed because the Hells Angels wanted it,” the source said.

Soon, their numbers grew to 18 full-patch members paying $300 a month in club dues. It included men such as Clint McLaughlin, whose repeated convictions for vicious assaults on previous girlfriends were well-known when he was recruited. The Hells Angels’ code of conduct prohibits membership for domestic or child abusers, but McLaughlin was allowed to join the Fallen Saints.

Last summer, McLaughlin kidnapped his fiancee and nearly beat her to death when she returned his engagement ring. He was kicked out of the club.

Not all Fallen Saints were hardcore criminals. A handful “just sold weed or steroids,” the source said. Like some Hells Angels, a few were not criminally active at all – they just enjoyed being part of outlaw biker culture.

One evening last summer, Fallen Saints members received a text message. It contained the name of a Saskatoon bar and the words “pink flamingos” – their code name for Outlaws.

Fallen Saints immediately rode to the bar and confronted the Outlaws, who had been brazen enough to wear their full patch jackets in public. When they began to fight outside, the Outlaws’ superior numbers gave them the upper hand, the source said. That’s when several Hells Angels arrived with batons and brass knuckles. The brawl resulted in severe beatings for the Outlaws.

The bar owner was threatened and ordered to “lose” the security tape footage from the parking lot, but police have plenty of other evidence, the source said.

It was around this time the Hells Angels realized they needed even more muscle. They convinced two other clubs – P.A.’s Saints and Sinners and Saskatoon’s Silver Ghosts – to “patch over” and become Fallen Saints.

Their numbers more than doubled, but the Hells Angels were still nervous, the source said.

They directed the Fallen Saints to solidify their relationship with Saskatoon’s largest aboriginal street gang, the Terror Squad, the source said. There had long been connections and informal overlap. For example, Terror Squad leader Darren Harper was linked to the Hells Angels in a parole board report following his cocaine trafficking conviction several years ago.

Two Fallen Saints and three Terror Squad bosses met and agreed to work more together, the source said.

In one incident, they jointly agreed on discipline for a Fallen Saints prospect member who insulted a Terror Squad boss.

By the end of 2014, the Outlaws had finally been driven underground, and many left town, the source said. The Hells Angels, Fallen Saints and Terror Squad had achieved the dominance they craved. It wouldn’t last long – the Project Forseti raids came just weeks later.

So far, 16 people have been charged as a result of Project Forseti. The massive police raids targeted the Fallen Saints and Hells Angels and uncovered hundreds of firearms and more than $8 million worth of drugs. While several of the bikers who were arrested are now out on bail, police have confirmed they are considering criminal organization charges against some of those arrested in Project Forseti.

]]>http://news.nationalpost.com/news/canada/inside-the-saskatchewan-biker-gangs-how-the-hells-angels-feud-with-outlaws-led-to-allegiance-with-fallen-saints-club/feed0stdBikers bearing Hells Angels B.C. logo jackets and escorted by police travel out of Saskatoon near the Shaw Centre Sunday, July 22, 2012Richard Marjan/The Starphoenix Hells Angel seeking parole, but it could be hard to find halfway house willing to take on notorious gangsterhttp://news.nationalpost.com/news/canada/hells-angel-seeking-parole-but-it-could-be-hard-to-find-halfway-house-willing-to-take-on-notorious-gangster
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A well-connected drug trafficker recruited into the Hells Angels’ most notorious chapter in Canada while the gang was embroiled in a bloody turf war in Montreal is scheduled to be released soon on his lengthy prison sentence.

Michel Rose, 59, was recruited directly into Maurice (Mom) Boucher’s Nomads chapter in 1998 without having to go through the elaborate underling system Boucher created about four years earlier when he declared war on rival organized crime groups who referred to themselves as the Alliance.

The gang war, which resulted in more than 150 deaths between 1994 and 2002, centred on who could sell drugs like cocaine and hashish in cities like Montreal, Quebec City and other parts of the province.

John Mahoney / Postmedia NewsMaurice Boucher, right, outside the funeral of a friend in 2000.

Rose was brought in because he gave the Hells Angels excellent contacts within the Port of Montreal and had experience smuggling drugs. At the time he was recruited by Boucher, now serving a life sentence for ordering the deaths of prison guards, Rose was involved in a deal to bring about six shipments of at least 2000 kilograms of cocaine into Canada from Colombia.

During a police investigation, some members of the Rockers, an underling gang Boucher established to gradually recruit potential Hells Angels, were recorded as they complained about Rose’s quick ascension into the biker gang’s chapter. Rose’s influence was immediately apparent to police when they learned he had a seat at the so-called “Table of Six,” an elite group within the Nomads who made all decisions on their large-scale purchases of drugs like cocaine and hashish.

The Nomads chapter was wiped out in 2001 when almost all of its members were arrested in Operation Springtime 2001, a three-year investigation into the Hells Angels and its subordinate groups.

In March 2004, Rose pleaded guilty to taking part in a general conspiracy to commit murder, drug trafficking, participating in the activities of a gang and conspiracy to import cocaine into Canada.

He received an overall prison sentence of 22 years, and had 16 left to serve when he entered his guilty pleas. It was one of the longest sentences issued in cases related to Operation Springtime 2001 and its length was due to Rose’s role in smuggling Colombian cocaine into the country.

Rose is scheduled to reach his statutory release, the two-thirds mark of his sentence, within days. The Parole Board of Canada recently decided to impose conditions on the release.

“Your potential for being reinserted into society is weak,” the parole board noted in its written summary. The conditions were scheduled to be laid out during a hearing at a penitentiary in Sainte-Anne-des-Plaines on Wednesday.

His case-management team, the people who prepare inmates for release, recommended that Rose be required to live at a halfway house for at least part of the five years that remain on his sentence due to his “potential for violence and [his] irresponsibility when faced with your violent acts.” While taking part in rehabilitation programs, Rose refused to discuss the murders the Nomads chapter ordered while he was a member.

Finding a halfway house willing to take on a Hells Angel as a resident might prove a challenge. One has already rejected him as a candidate.

Rose has also done little to impress both the parole board and Correctional Service Canada in the past. He received a federal sentence in 1978 for drug trafficking and violated his parole by carrying a loaded firearm and possessing hashish and PCP.

While serving this current sentence, he continued his affiliation with people tied to the Hells Angels and was suspected of influence peddling and loansharking within a penitentiary. The allegations caused Rose to be transferred to a maximum-security penitentiary, in 2009. His security classification was reduced back to medium two years later and he was transferred to a penitentiary in Sainte-Anne-des-Plaines.

Rose was named a prospect in the Nomads chapter on Oct. 5, 1998, and became a full-patch member in 1999. During the same period, Rose was involved in a deal with Sandra Antelo, a Colombian woman who lived in Montreal, to bring large amounts of cocaine into Canada from her native country.

Antelo had managed to work underneath police radar for years as she smuggled relatively small quantities of cocaine into Montreal. She tried to stay away from organizations like the Hells Angels because she knew they attracted attention from the police.

Rose failed to tell Antelo which organization he was joining and she, who later became a witness for the prosecution, would regret ever meeting him.

Through her dealings with Rose, Antelo was arranging to have much larger quantities of cocaine — up to 2,400 kilograms — smuggled into ports. The risks were much higher than Antelo was used to and she ended up in a dispute with Boucher over how much the Hells Angels should be paying her. During the summer of 2000, someone tried to shoot Antelo as she drove her car along Highway 15.

A New York judge needs to impose a 30-year sentence on Quebec’s billion-dollar pot playboy because when he secures a transfer to Canada his prison time could be slashed from decades to months by Canada’s lenient parole system, U.S. prosecutors say.

Jimmy Cournoyer, 34, shepherded a drug enterprise from a small marijuana grow op in his Laval apartment as a teenager to a “massive international drug consortium” moving $1-billion in marijuana and cocaine throughout Canada and the United States, prosecutors say.

Cournoyer is painted as a colourful drug lord who forged ties to the Mafia, the Hells Angels, aboriginal gangs and Mexico’s Sinaloa drug cartel.

After fierce claims of innocence, Cournoyer struck a plea deal last year, the key to which was prosecutors agreeing not to oppose him serving his sentence in Canada instead of the United States.

Without that concession, Cournoyer’s lawyer Gerald McMahon said in an interview, his client would not have plead guilty, calling it a “deal breaker.”

But prosecutors now argue the government’s concession means Cournoyer’s sentence should be increased to compensate for Canada’s parole generosity.

“There is every reason to believe that the defendant’s request for a transfer will be granted,” Loretta Lynch, U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of New York told a federal judge, Monday, in a sentencing memorandum filed in court.

“Cournoyer is unlikely to serve the full amount of any incarceratory sentence imposed,” the memo says. “Other than convicted murderers, defendants are eligible to apply for full parole after serving one-third of their total sentence, or seven years, whichever comes first — a significant difference from U.S. federal law, under which parole has been abolished.”

Court exhibitSome of the drug haul found by police investigating Jimmy Cournoyer.

Prosecutors argue that if the judge imposes a sentence of 20 years, as Cournoyer is seeking, it could see him released after only 80 months if he is transferred to Canada under the prisoner transfer program. The government is seeking a 30-year sentence.

“A sentence of 30 years, as recommended by the probation department, would at least provide some assurance that Cournoyer will actually serve the minimum sentence deemed sufficient by Congress for his offense of conviction,” says the memo from Ms. Lynch.

Even that would be generous, prosecutors say, as he would have received a life sentence if convicted after trial for operating a continuing criminal enterprise and masterminding massive drug trafficking.

Mr. McMahon said the government has constantly overstretched in its portrayal of Cournoyer. He denies his client was hooked in with Vito Rizzuto, the now-dead boss of the Mafia in Montreal, or other criminal organizations.

“Yes, there is all sorts of marijuana; yes, it’s a billion dollars worth, and yes, there are tools of the trade that go with that but it comes down to marijuana,” said Mr. McMahon in an interview.

“In the final analysis, no matter how the government dresses this up, this is simply marijuana writ large … and before Jimmy gets out of jail it will be legal in this country.”

U.S. Attorney's Office Eastern District of New YorkGuns, drugs, long knives and ammo seized from Jimmy Cournoyer's co-accused.

He compared his client to bootleggers of yore.

“He is the Joe Kennedy of the 21st Century. Joe Kennedy was a bootlegger in the ’20s in America and he was not respectable, but his children went on to become president, senators and the like.

“Jimmy Cournoyer was an entrepreneur of the large-scale variety in connection with marijuana.”

Prosecutors, however, say Cournoyer is a dangerous crime boss with a “rampant history of recidivism,” the sentencing memo says.

Prosecutors claim Cournoyer had underlings kidnap the girlfriend of a man who owed him money and set aside $2-million to finance the murder of anyone who ratted against him. Mr. McMahon denies this.

Cournoyer’s playboy lifestyle ended when he was arrested in 2012 while on vacation in Mexico and forced onto a plane to the United States.

His life in crime started as a teenager at the behest of his father, according to a letter to the judge from his mother, Linda. “He put my son into the world of crime,” she wrote.

Cournoyer was first arrested in 1998 in Laval when he sold marijuana to an undercover police officer. While on probation he was smuggling marijuana across the border through aboriginal gangs on the Kanesatake Indian reserve.

Paul Chiasson/The Canadian PressMixed martial arts champion Georges St-Pierre send a letter, which he later regretted, in support of Jimmy Cournoyer.

In 2001, he was arrested in Toronto for selling ecstasy pills to an undercover agent. During the arrest he tried to pull a .45-caliber semi-automatic handgun loaded with armour-piercing, hollow-point bullets, police said.

While on bail, he moved to even greater heights in the drug underworld, reaching out to the Mafia and bikers, prosecutors say.

He was occasionally arrested but always ended up growing his business. His underlings started flying private jets across the border loaded with millions of dollars in cash.

Regina resident David Mihalyko was broke and his 13-year-old Chevy Blazer truck was out of gas. It was September 2010, and all he had in his pocket were some Oxycontin tablets, “legally prescribed for him as a result of an injury he suffered to his foot,” according to court documents. Mr. Mihalyko decided to raise some cash by selling two tablets to a woman he thought was a prostitute, working the Regina stroll. She paid $60 for the tablets. Mr. Mihalyko spent all of the cash on fuel for his truck.

The woman was an undercover police officer. Mr. Mihalyko was arrested and charged with trafficking in a controlled substance. He pleaded guilty to the offence, and received a conditional sentence of nine months. But the Crown in Saskatchewan wasn’t satisfied. It turned to relatively new civil forfeiture laws to extract more from the hapless defendant. The state went after his truck, claiming it was an instrument of crime.

Unlike most targets of civil forfeiture in Canada, Mr. Mihalyko fought back. His case went to Saskatchewan Court of Queen’s Bench, where a judge decided he really wasn’t much of a drug dealer. The Oxycontin sale was an “isolated incident,” the judge found, and the truck seizure was “disproportionate to the offence.” The judge said Mr. Mihalyko should have his truck returned to him.

Most people just seem to cave when faced with these lawsuits

But the Crown appealed. In April, 2012, a panel of three judges found Mr. Mihalyko’s offence to be considerably more serious than the trial judge had indicated. The appeal was allowed, and Mr. Mihalyko’s truck was lost for good.

“I find it was extreme, unfair and basically gives the government a licence to steal,” Mr. Mihalyko told reporters after the appeal court decision.

His lawyer, Brad Tilling, said Mr. Mihalyko went as far as he could before finally succumbing to “a very powerful instrument.”

His case is not unusual. Civil libertarians, defence lawyers and some judges are raising concerns about the use of civil forfeiture in Canada. Seven provinces have enacted legislation allowing authorities to seize and then dispose of an individual’s private property, even in cases where illegal activities have neither been proven, nor charges laid.

Krista Bryce/Daily NewsThe Hells Angels clubhouse in Nanaimo.

It’s difficult for regular citizens to seek redress; the costs of defence can be prohibitive. Mr. Mihalyko was the first person in his province to actually challenge a civil forfeiture.

Members of the Hells Angels Motorcycle Club in B.C. seem prepared to spend large sums on legal challenges. They have their sights set on civil forfeiture. Joe Arvay, a prominent constitutional lawyer, admits the bikers may not seem “the most sympathetic” of clients, but they have an important case, he says, and it’s going to be made soon in B.C. Supreme Court. At issue are property rights and basic constitutional protections afforded all Canadians.

On Tuesday, local Hells Angels members filed documents calling the province’s seven-year-old Civil Forfeiture Act unconstitutional. Authorities in B.C are attempting to use the legislation to forfeit three Hells Angels clubhouses — in Vancouver’s east end, in Kelowna and in Nanaimo. The clubhouses were allegedly used by Hells Angels as “instruments of crime.”

The Nanaimo clubhouse was targeted for forfeiture in 2007, after a lengthy police investigation and property search; these did not result in a criminal prosecution. Last year, authorities launched proceedings to forfeit the Vancouver and Kelowna properties. It’s alleged they have been used as instruments in the commission of crimes including drug production, assault and murder.

In an unusual appeal for public support this week, local Hells Angels member and spokesman Rick Ciarniello said the forfeiture legislation “should trouble everyone and not just our members. Governments everywhere are now routinely using these ‘civil forfeiture’ laws as a substitute for the criminal process. Most people just seem to cave when faced with these forfeiture lawsuits. We aren’t going to do that and our fight will be for all British Columbians.”

Most civil forfeiture cases in Canada involve marijuana grow operations and drug transactions; people accused of cultivation and possession can have their cash and properties taken once authorities convince a judge that, on the balance of probabilities, they are proceeds or instruments of an illegal activity.

Besides cash, property most commonly forfeited include cars, jewellery, cellphones, and computers. They are sold off, and the returns are typically used to fund various crime-reduction programs and strategies.

In B.C., proceeds are used to fund the province’s civil forfeiture program itself. The Director of Civil Forfeiture publishes and updates a list of items it has seized and liquidated. Recent items include a 1964 Volkswagen Karman Ghia — related to a case of possession for the purpose of trafficking — and the forfeiture of $52,025 cash. The bounty keeps piling up. B.C.’s Court of Appeal has decided there is “no requirement” that “the primary use of [a forfeited] property was unlawful.”

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Some critics say it’s a blatant cash grab. “It’s all about the money,” claims David Karp, a Vancouver lawyer who has defended clients in civil forfeiture cases. “It’s patently unreasonable and unfair. The legislation completely turns things upside down. If the Crown can’t get a criminal conviction they try to seize his property. And the accused is treated as guilty until proven innocent.”

No one charged Remus Petran with a crime, but he still lost a large amount of cash. Late one night in October, 2009, the Toronto resident was driving along Highway 401 near Morrisburg, Ont. Road conditions were good but he was travelling below the speed limit. According to court documents, an Ontario Provincial Police (OPP) officer pulled him over, thinking he might be intoxicated.

The officer poked around Mr. Petran’s car, opened its trunk, and discovered a knapsack filled with $75,980 in small bills. Mr. Petran explained that he worked in construction and was paid in cash. The officer seemed not to accept the explanation, and decided the money represented the proceeds of crime. He arrested Mr. Petran and seized the cash and his car.

The Daily CourierA lone motorcycle is parked outside of the Hells Angels clubhouse in Kelowna, B.C.

Mr. Petran was soon released unconditionally. No charges were laid, and his car was returned to him. But police hung onto the money, “pending further investigation.” For reasons that were never explained in court, the OPP forwarded nearly $30,000 of the seized cash to the Canada Revenue Agency.

The Attorney General of Ontario (AGO) then sought to keep the remaining $46,000, using the province’s Civil Remedies Act, its version of B.C.’s “pioneering” forfeiture legislation. The government’s motion for an <em>ex parte</em> order was denied by Superior Court Justice D.M. Brown, who slammed the OPP and the AGO.

“For one government agency to distribute to another property it did not own, without notice to the purported owner of the property or without sanction of a court order, may strike those agencies as an efficient, uncluttered way in which to collect tax,” the judge wrote in his reasons for denying the motion. “But the AGO should understand that such conduct, absent adequate explanatory evidence, will raise questions in the mind of a court about the propriety and legality of such conduct.”

Mr. Petran never sought the return of his cash.

Mr. Mihalyko, for his part, could not be reached for further comment this week; he seems to have dropped from sight. Even his lawyer, Mr. Tilling, has lost contact with him. He can’t call Mr. Mihalyko anymore, because his client’s cellphone was also seized by the state.

Quebec’s most powerful labour union has been rocked by allegations of corruption in its construction division over two days of testimony at a public inquiry.

A co-operative witness has described how Hells Angels sympathizers and men connected to the Italian Mafia infiltrated the province’s powerful FTQ labour union through its construction wing.

Ken Pereira said a senior advisor to the president of the FTQ had complained that the construction arm let organized crime in and now the union leadership was stuck having to deal with the problem.

Pereira testified that union brass were aware that the former head of the construction wing, Jocelyn Dupuis, had ties to Raynald Desjardins, reputedly a top-level figure in the Italian Mafia. Pereira said he talked about it with Henri Masse, a longtime FTQ president who left the organization in 2007.

The Hells are part of FTQ

“(I told him) Jocelyn Dupuis can’t be hanging out with the Hells, he can’t be hanging out with Raynald Desjardins,” Pereira said.

“You can’t be with the Hells Angels in a bar, you can’t be sitting at their table at a boxing match. He’s a director of the largest labour organization. We represent 70,000 members (in the construction wing alone).”

Pereira said that’s when the union president told him he’d been involved in a loan to Ronald Beaulieu, a man identified as a Hells Angels sympathizer.

Beaulieu was close to Jocelyn Dupuis and had already received a loan from the Fonds de solidarite FTQ, the multibillion-dollar labour-sponsored investment fund. The federal government recently cancelled popular tax credits for investing in that fund.

“What I found incredible is that (Masse) said, ’It was me that brought that file to the Fonds.’ That’s when you understand that Jocelyn gave it to Henri, and Henri brought it to the fund,” Pereira said.

Eventually Pereira, the head of a union local, stole six months worth of receipts and used them to force Dupuis to resign over astronomical expense claims. Dupuis was eventually charged with fraud by provincial police in 2010 and is awaiting trial.

Pereira recounted the chummy relationship Dupuis had with members of organized crime. In a story he’d heard second-hand, he spoke of a confrontation between Dupuis, some biker-gang-linked individuals, and the son of a once-powerful construction boss, Tony Accurso.

Dupuis had access to Accurso’s private box at the Bell Centre. The construction boss’ son, Jimmy, was furious that Dupuis was entertaining Joe Borsellino — a rival businessman — in his family’s arena suite.

He liked to show that his family was the FTQ, but that he had another one

Pereira alleged that Jimmy Accurso was roughed up by Hells Angels but the altercation was cut short by another union executive who intervened.

A few weeks later, Borsellino was beaten up at his office.

He recently testified at the inquiry that he didn’t know why.

Pereira said he knew Tony Accurso well, having met as many as 40 times. He was looking to get work for his local members and felt left out by FTQ-Construction because of his problems with Dupuis. Accurso needed Pereira’s members for a venture in Alberta.

On Tuesday, Pereira recounted how he learned from a colleague that organized crime had long been part of the construction union.

According to the former union member, Dupuis was close to Normand (Casper) Ouimet, a Hells Angels member implicated in the construction industry who is now accused of involvement in 22 murders, along with other charges.

“The Hells are with us. The Hells are part of FTQ-(Construction),” Pereira quoted a colleague saying.

“Everyone knew at the FTQ that Jocelyn Dupuis was, or wanted to be, a (gang) ‘hang-around,”’ Pereira said. “He liked to show that his family was the FTQ, but that he had another one.”

MONTREAL — The Montreal police have been asked by the Public Security Minister to investigate after an escaped Hells Angel was found dead as Sûrété du Québec officers were closing in on him in Ste-Anne-de-Sorel.

A police source confirmed to The Montreal Gazette that the dead man is René Charlebois, 48, the Hells Angel inmate who escaped from minimum security at a Laval penitentiary on Sept. 14. The SQ, armed with an arrest warrant, went to the home just after midnight Wednesday. When the officers went inside the house they found the man dead. Sources say Charlebois killed himself. Whenever there is a death and one police force is involved, protocol requires another police force to investigate.

Charlebois was found dead in a yellow home on Ilette au Pé, a skinny strip of land between Channel-du-Moine and the St. Lawrence River. Crime tape put up by the SQ extends to a bridge under construction keeping most media and curious onlookers at bay.

Montreal police spokesperson Constable Laurent Dyke would not comment on any aspect of the incident, pending the conclusion of the independent investigation. “Our major crimes sergeant detectives are on site and the perimeter is locked down,” Dyke said.

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]]>http://news.nationalpost.com/news/canada/rene-charlebois-escaped-hells-angel-found-dead-in-quebec-as-police-closed-in-on-him/feed0stdEscaped Hells Angel René Charlebois, shown in 2000, was found dead as Sûrété du Québec officers were closing in on him in Ste-Anne-de-Sorel, Quebec'I don't want your f—ing business': Hells Angels open up shop in Toronto's east end… but not everyone is welcomehttp://news.nationalpost.com/toronto/i-dont-want-your-f-ing-business-hells-angels-open-up-shop-in-torontos-east-end
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The Hells Angels Motorcycle Club has opened a boutique on a busy street in Toronto’s east end.

The Carlaw Avenue storefront is inconspicuous to most: a plate-glass window displays the numeral 81 in two-metre-high red numbers, a sign announces “ATM inside,” and a red electric sign glows “Open.” But it’s less inconspicuous to others. Police say criminals know “81” as code for the Hells’ initials: 8 stands for H, the eighth letter of the alphabet, 1 stands for A.

Displayed under a glass counter at the store’s front are coffee mugs bearing, in red letters, “Support BRM,” for $10 each. BRM stands for Big Red Machine, another alias for the Hells Angels. Next to them are lighters and ashtrays reading Big Red Machine, and safety construction glasses. (Why these are for sale is unclear.)

A bottom shelf holds a stack of Hells Angels calendars from 2005, featuring a buxom woman draped on a motorcycle.

“Those are two for one,” joked an employee. About 10 people join me browsing, but nobody’s buying.

Matthew Sherwood for National PostPeople shop in the Hells Angels retail store on Carlaw Avenue in Toronto on September 17, 2013.

Racks offer long-sleeved black T-shirts reading, on the arm, “Support Big Red Machine,” in various sizes. White skulls surrounded by flames adorn the shirts, along with the numerals 81 and the words, “Support BRM Downtown Toronto.”

Only Hells Angels members may wear the words “Hells Angels,” explains Acting Staff-Sergeant Lenny Isnor of the Ontario Provincial Police biker enforcement unit. To make money on merchandise, the club dreamed up the pseudonyms.

“It’s something they’ve been doing for years and they make a lot of money doing it,” Staff-Sgt. Isnor says. “They used to have a chain across Canada called ‘Route 81.’ ” A Hells Angels support club in Halifax called the Dark Siders sells both Hells Angels and Dark Siders merchandise, he adds.

Chuck Kotowick at Mayfair Plating, whose business is next door to the Hells Angels shop, says the bikers moved in about four months ago.

“I’ve got nothing bad to say about them,” he says. “They said, ‘We’re your new neighbours. We’re the Hells Angels.’ They park their bikes out back. They’ve been working on the shop for about a month and a half getting it together.”

Matthew Sherwood for National PostThe Hells Angels former clubhouse on Eastern Avenue in Toronto is pictured on September 17, 2013.

It’s been six years since the Hells Angels’ old clubhouse, around the corner on Eastern Avenue, was seized by the Crown after a police raid. The club has fought in court to reclaim the property, so far without success. The clubhouse, a two-storey structure built of concrete blocks and once painted yellow, looks abandoned. Metre-high weeds grow out of cracks in the concrete out front.

Back at the shop, Jimmy Johns emerged empty-handed after browsing in the store.

“If you like skulls on T-shirts it’s great. If you like skulls on mugs it’s great,” said Mr. Johns, who works for a rental car company.

Asked if he had qualms about shopping there, Mr. Johns said, “You can have qualms about shopping at Joe Fresh, too.”

But Staff-Sgt. Isnor urged shoppers to stay away.

“You are supporting a criminal organization if you buy that stuff,” he said.

Matthew Sherwood for National PostThe Hells Angels retail store on Carlaw Avenue in Toronto is pictured on September 17, 2013.

The police may not need to worry. If they want to sell anything, the Hells Angels will need to seriously brush up on their customer service skills. By 1 p.m. Tuesday, a web site, hellsangelstorontodowntown.com, that lamented the loss of the clubhouse but also promoted the shop, disappeared from the Internet. With the arrival of television crews, staff became increasingly nervous.

A man had let me into the shop after I conceded I was journalist, but insisted I was there to shop.

But not long afterwards, a second employee of the store, sporting a long white pony tail, threw me out.

“I don’t want your f—ing business,” he said. “Get the f— off my property.” He then grabbed my shoulder and shoved me down a short flight of stairs. The television crews loved that scene.

By 2 p.m., the show was over. Staff had locked the doors, turned out the lights and disappeared into an inner room.

When you’re the Hells Angels, closing time is whenever you want it to be.

National Post

]]>http://news.nationalpost.com/toronto/i-dont-want-your-f-ing-business-hells-angels-open-up-shop-in-torontos-east-end/feed2galleryHellsAngels02.jpgMatthew Sherwood for National PostMatthew Sherwood for National PostMatthew Sherwood for National PostQuebec playboy Jimmy Cournoyer accepts plea bargain that avoids life imprisonment for the international drug kingpinhttp://news.nationalpost.com/news/canada/jimmy-cournoyer-accepts-plea-bargain-that-avoids-life-imprisonment
http://news.nationalpost.com/news/canada/jimmy-cournoyer-accepts-plea-bargain-that-avoids-life-imprisonment#commentsThu, 30 May 2013 01:31:53 +0000http://news.nationalpost.com/?p=315781

Quebec’s Jimmy Cournoyer does two things well: selling enormous quantities of illegal drugs at astounding profit and minimizing his punishment when caught. Both talents were on display Wednesday as he stood in a New York courtroom admitting he was the mastermind of a $1-billion network that flooded the United States with Canadian marijuana and Canada with Mexican cocaine.

It was perhaps the inevitable outcome of his flamboyant transition from charming, suburban kid from Laval to a playboy pot prince who sat at the table with the biggest names in crime.

Just 33, Cournoyer’s meteoric career as a remarkably adept and entrepreneurial drug trafficker crashed to Earth with a plea bargain that avoids life imprisonment but comes with a mandatory 20 year minimum sentence, losing $10-million in seized cash, and acceptance of a $1-billion forfeiture order.

The deal also offers him the possibility of being transferred to a Canadian jail to serve his sentence.

This organization consisted of a den of thieves ranging from the Rizzuto and Bonanno crime families, to the Hells Angels and the Sinaloa cartel

“His territory — all of North America. His goal — to extend the deadly narcotics trade as far as he could,” Loretta E. Lynch, U.S. attorney in Brooklyn, said of Cournoyer after his plea.

“This organization consisted of a den of thieves ranging from the Rizzuto and Bonanno crime families, to the Hells Angels and the Sinaloa cartel. The organization operated across all of North America,” said Brian Crowell, Special Agent-in-Charge of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration in New York.

It was an opportunity for authorities to celebrate and for Cournoyer to contemplate something he never faced in Canada: a hammering by the court that puts him out of circulation.

“With the top charge, he was facing life imprisonment and when you’re 33 years old, that’s a pretty fearsome thing to be pondering,” said Cournoyer’s lawyer, Gerald McMahon.

He misses Canada and he misses his family

“He misses Canada and he misses his family.”

The last time Cournoyer was sentenced, he emerged unfazed from a Canadian prison on Feb. 5, 2007, to find his drug ring in tatters.

On parole and living in a supervised halfway house, he organized clandestine meetings with underlings at Montreal metro stations while traveling to his parole board-approved job, sending his men back out into the fractious underworld to rebuild.

After arranging a fake job that allowed him to move about Montreal without supervision, he coaxed face-to-face meetings with members of the Rizzuto Mafia family and the Hells Angels Motorcycle Club, negotiating their partnership, offering his cross-border smuggling contacts as his end.

Phil Carpenter/Postmedia NewsVito Rizzuto was sentenced in 2007 to 10 years in a U.S. prison for his role in three gangland murders.

He had one other task.

He tracked down the girlfriend of a man who had double crossed him while behind bars. She was kidnapped when she visited family near Montreal and her distress used to force a financial settlement.

Cournoyer was back in business.

He had marijuana grown in outdoor fields in British Columbia and brought to Quebec by plane and truck. Only a few shipments were caught: In 2008, a colleague was caught at an airfield near Vancouver loading marijuana onto a private plane; in 2010 his cousin, Luc Cournoyer, was arrested driving marijuana across Canada in a mobile home.

Cournoyer also built elaborate indoor grow ops close to home. A hidden door in a Laval warehouse led to a two-storey plantation where an electrical bypass stole power from neighbours and six-foot tall charcoal filters masked the marijuana smell.

He was facing life imprisonment and when you’re 33 years old, that’s a pretty fearsome thing to be pondering

With contacts made in prison, he sent emissaries to the United States to arrange bulk sales to mafiosi, Mexican traffickers, bikers and dealers of all stripes and, using contacts on reserves straddling the border, the drugs were driven to warehouses in New York. Often a truck would unload the pot and immediately fill up with cash or guns for the drive back.

Soon, the money was also being used to buy cocaine from Mexico’s deadly Sinaloa cartel for smuggling into Canada for distribution by the Rizzuto organization, prosecutors said.

U.S. authorities say he was supplying most of the eastern seaboard with marijuana earning his nicknames “Cosmo” and “Superman.”

Maury Phillips / WireImageJimmy Cournoyer's girlfriend at one time was Amelia Racine, a professional model.

He revelled in his success. He owned one of the world’s elite sports cars, a Bugatti Veyron worth about $2-million, his girlfriend at one time was Amelia Racine, a professional model, and he attended lavish parties with celebrities. A fitness buff, he was a friend of Georges St-Pierre and even sparred with the world UFC mixed martial arts champion.

It was a different life than his troubled childhood.

Born into an affluent family in Laval, his parents split when he was 16 and his father’s construction and real estate business slipped into bankruptcy. He had trouble adapting to his more humble circumstance, according to parole records.

By the age of 19, Cournoyer was carving out space in the noisy, competitive underworld of Quebec to enhance his finances.

He and his brother, Joey, started a modest marijuana grow op in the Laval apartment they shared. In 1998, Cournoyer sold pot to an undercover police agent.

Fiercely entrepreneurial, he boasted to the agent he was expanding. He was in the midst of setting up a larger grow op at his chalet in Saint-Sauveur, a ski community in the Laurentians north of Montreal.

It was raided by police.

If police intervention gave Cournoyer cause to re-evaluate his career, the court outcome may have erased any fear: On Jan. 6, 1999, he pleaded guilty to drug charges and was sentenced only to a fine.

Paul Chiasson/The Canadian PressMixed martial arts champion Georges St-Pierre send a letter, which he later regretted, in support of Jimmy Cournoyer.

His business didn’t suffer. By 2000, he found customers farther from his home and hooked up with aboriginal smugglers, notably Tyron Canatonquin, a resident of the Kanesatake reserve near Montreal.

Together, they exploited the nebulous status of First Nation boundaries to move large quantities of marijuana from Canada to the United States, where it sold for more than twice the price. With Cournoyer’s supply and Canatonquin’s border expertise, it was the underworld equivalent of an oil patch giant hooking up with a gas station tycoon.

The border traffic eventually caught police attention. At the time, the RCMP said the ring shifted criminal culture on reserves from growing pot to being the transit point in international operations. When arrests came, police named Canatonquin as the ring leader while Cournoyer kept his head down, pleading guilty to marijuana trafficking just four days after his arrest.

He again escaped serious punishment and managed to stay in close contact with his smuggling experts on the reserve.

I think he really does regret that he’s been a bit of a wild child

Cournoyer next expanded his product line, branching out into Ecstasy by mimicking his success with pot. He controlled his own line of supply by establishing Ecstasy production facilities and pill presses to churn out the popular night club drug and brought in a tight ring of co-conspirators.

The U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency seized 23,000 of his pills in Miami and arrested three Mississauga residents in 2001. Canadian police then launched Project Hollywood to find the local source.

An undercover officer arranged to meet Cournoyer’s partner, Alexandru Dulbe, at a downtown Toronto hotel in December, 2001. When his partner was arrested for selling 10,000 pills, Cournoyer fled but was tackled by officers as he tried to yank a .45-calibre handgun, loaded with armour-piercing bullets, out of his waistband.

While many partners were prosecuted in the U.S, Cournoyer’s lawyers convinced authorities to prosecute him locally. He pleaded guilty to drug trafficking and gun charges but while on bail pending trial he was still sending drug couriers to the U.S.

U.S. Attorney's Office Eastern District of New YorkGuns, drugs, long knives and ammo seized from Jimmy Cournoyer's co-accused.

Also while waiting, he was charged with vehicular manslaughter after the Porsche Cayenne he was driving rolled on the highway, killing a passenger. He managed to have his sentence for the road death run concurrently with his drug and gun sentence.

His aggressive rebuild after his release exceeded anything he had managed before, but his grandiose U.S. foray eventually teetered, plagued by informants and undercover agents.

His high life ended when he stepped off a flight from Montreal to Cancun on Feb. 16, 2012, five years from his last stay behind bars. He was seized by Mexican border guards at the request of U.S. agents.

As they tried to fly him to the United States, he saw a telephone and furtively called the Canadian embassy, saying he was being kidnapped. A guard spotted him and tore the phone from the room.

Fighting to stay off the plane, he caused such a ruckus that American Airlines refused to let him board. Another tantrum thwarted him being put on a plane to Los Angeles and he was locked back in a cell.

Later guards swarmed in, shackled his hands and feet, placed a hood over his head and carried him onto a plane, escorted by several Taser-carrying guards.

It was his last day of freedom.

“I think he really does regret that he’s been a bit of a wild child,” said Mr. McMahon. “Hopefully this is a learning process.”

It was a million-dollar Super Bowl party finely catered with an open bar for 2,700 guests also vying for door prizes of a motorcycle, Sea-Doo, jewellery and flat-screen TV.

Between the pasta and the main course, however, as the biggest sports game in North America got under way, hundreds of police officers surrounded the hall north of Toronto.

The raid was the public unveiling of police allegations the gala was part of a massive illegal sports-betting operation tied to the Hells Angels and the Mafia, one of the biggest and most sophisticated in the country.

With computer servers in Costa Rica, toll-free phone lines, a smartphone app for gamblers to bet on all major sporting events and kill-switches that could erase the firm’s records, Platinum Sportsbook was making about $1-million a month in profit, police alleged.

But the dark connection between the swank party and appalling violence is seen in police connecting men and money from Platinum to the 2004 Toronto shooting that paralyzed Louise Russo, an innocent mother of three.

“I think all we have to is look back at the California Sandwiches [shooting] and ask Louise Russo whether or not organized crime and debt collection has an impact on our community.”

In that incident, gangsters sprayed a restaurant with bullets in a botched hit on a mobster. They missed their target and hit Ms. Russo in the back.

Investigators told the National Post they believe that shooting was a dispute over money from Platinum and at least some of the $2-million restitution money Ms. Russo received in a controversial plea deal came from Platinum coffers.

None of Sunday’s charges related to the shooting.

Police charged six men with participating in a criminal organization, conspiracy and gambling offences. Among the accused is William “Billy” Miller, 49, of Toronto, a former chapter president of the Hells Angels.

Investigators also raided nine homes and businesses, seizing about $2.5-million in cash. A large safe was taken away by truck from a home in Vaughan for police to crack.

Police said Platinum was a lucrative marriage between the Mafia and the Hells Angels.

ADRIAN HUMPHREYS/NATIONAL POSTRCMP Acting Superintendent Keith Finn, officer in charge of the Combined Forces Special Enforcement Unit, announced charges in a huge illegal online sports betting operation linked to the Hells Angels and the Mafia, during a press conference in Markham, Ontario on Monday.

But police link men and money from Platinum to the 2004 Toronto shooting that paralyzed Louise Russo, an innocent mother of three.

“This was the largest investigation to date targeting illegal gaming and organized crimes participation in these criminal offences,” said Acting Superintendent Keith Finn, in charge of the Combined Forces Special Enforcement Unit, a joint anti-mob unit of several police forces.

“Illegal gaming such as this lines the pockets of organized crime groups. Monies are utilized to fund … extortion, money laundering and loan sharking. Organized crime groups are using illegal gaming to purchase and traffic in drugs … being funnelled to human trafficking, prostitution.”

To patrons at Platinum’s glitzy Super Bowl party, that seedy toll seemed a long way away. Tickets for the event, now in its eighth year, are distributed to customers, friends and associates of Platinum as a promotion.

Police seized 20 computer terminals at the banquet hall, on which patrons could wager on the National Football League championship. But bets were not restricted to diners. Customers across Canada were making bets on Platinum’s online services, police said.

The party, estimated by an investigator to cost $1-million, was only the most visible element.

About 2,300 people were at the event that sprawled over several rooms of Le Parc Banquet Hall on Leslie Street in Markham.

More than 400 police, some heavily armed tactical officers in body armour, arrived about 7 p.m.

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“Myself and a couple friends had gotten up to go to the washroom and grab a drink. As we approached the main entrance of the hall about 100-plus cops and SWAT members equipped with heavy artillery ran in straight lines and swarmed all five rooms in the hall,” said Luigi Caruso, a party goer.

“It was pretty clear that they knew exactly who they came in there for.”

Police went from table to table looking at faces, occasionally grabbing someone and telling other officers they “got one,” he said.

The crowd grew agitated. An officer announced over the hall’s public address system the party was being raided for illegal gambling. Then an event co-ordinator spoke, saying to let police do their job so the officers can then “get the f— out.”

Many in the crowd started chanting for police to leave. As the chant spread, the TV feed for the game was cut. Eventually, everyone was asked to leave. No patrons were charged.

At least two Platinum websites, PlatinumSB.com and Betwho.com, both based in Costa Rica, were taken over by RCMP. The main site was registered in 2004.

“The website you are trying to access has been restrained by court order granted to the Attorney General of Ontario with the assistance of the Combined Forces Special Enforcement Unit,” the notices say.

The websites’ customer service phone numbers were also redirected to police. A call by the Post was answered by a woman who only said “Hello,” but said the phone was being answered by the RCMP when asked.

Police tracked more than 17,000 web hits and hundreds of phone calls within a few hours as customers tried to collect.

MONTREAL — One thousand police officers conducted raids in different Canadian cities against an alleged consortium of organized crime that had tentacles stretching from Mexico to Montreal.

Police said 103 people were arrested Thursday in different parts of Canada including two of the alleged ring leaders: one tied to the Hells Angels in British Columbia and another linked to Montreal’s infamous Irish West End Gang.

They said the organization hatched its plan in British Columbia and moved East, eventually processing millions of dollars worth of drugs each week.

REUTERS/Christinne MuschiM. Jean Audette, centre, deputy-director of the Surete du Quebec police force speaks about "Operation Loquace," a major drug bust in three provinces, at a news conference in Montreal Thursday.

Police said the organization, which had been under investigation for about six months, managed to rake in an estimated $50 million in that short time.

Police said those arrested included Larry Amero, 35, a full-patch member of the Hells Angels from B.C. who’d been living in Montreal in recent months. Also arrested was Shane Maloney, 35, a man linked to the Irish Mob. He also had ties to B.C. before moving east to Montreal.

Four others who held leadership roles in the group — including another man with ties to B.C., Rabih Alkalil — were still being sought by police late Thursday.

Quebec provincial police Insp. Michel Forget said the investigation into the well-organized group began last spring, aided by 30 different forces across the country including the RCMP.

The group did not hesitate to use violence to take control and expand their territories

“[It was] an important drug cartel formed by six individuals [in Quebec] who had the capacity to import and distribute large quantities in Quebec and elsewhere in Canada,” Forget told reporters at provincial police headquarters.

Forget said the investigation revealed the drugs were being imported into Canada from the United States using trucks. A trucking firm was under investigation and police were working Thursday to freeze its assets, he added.

The group allegedly used a middleman to co-operate with Mexican drug cartels and appeared to have the capacity to import and distribute about 75 kilograms of cocaine per week. Police also seized an arsenal of weapons, including 400 firearms as well as explosives like 1,486 sticks of dynamite.

“The group did not hesitate to use violence to take control and expand their territories,” Forget said.

Police described the ring as a well-organized “consortium” that had help from a variety of groups including the Hells Angels as well as the Italian and Irish Mafia.

They’ve all converged … to put their efforts and networks together in order to ensure a distribution network of that nature

“One of the key pieces we’re seeing here is the different organized crime families,” Forget said.

“They’ve all converged … to put their efforts and networks together in order to ensure a distribution network of that nature.”

Quebec provincial police said the operation, dubbed Operation Loquace was, in terms of size and manpower, almost as big as two huge strikes against criminal biker gangs in the province in 2001 and 2009.

Police say the organization managed to implant itself quickly in Eastern Canada because of a void that had developed there. They said that opening occurred after police operations against biker gangs, street gangs and the Italian Mafia in the last decade.

But the group clearly had some local help.

“They had to have certain support from these [deposed] individuals,” said Forget said.

Amero was identified by police in Quebec as being a member of the Hells Angels Westpoint chapter and as a former member of the White Rock chapter.

Amero was shot last year in Kelowna, B.C., in a gun attack that claimed the life of a notorious local gangster. Red Scorpions leader Jonathan Bacon was killed in the August 2011 shooting outside an upscale waterfront casino.

“He was involved in some incidents in B.C., but I won’t comment on that,” Forget said of Amero.

Maloney, meanwhile, faces charges stemming from an incident where an off-duty Montreal police officer was badly beaten in Playa del Carmen, a popular resort town in Mexico.

Warrants were issued for 128 people. As of late Thursday, two dozen suspects remained missing.

The accused face a variety of charges including drug trafficking, conspiracy and gangsterism.

Police said they seized $255,000 in cash as well as various quantities of cannabis, cocaine and other drugs. They also seized 13 vehicles and five homes worth about $1.5 million.

Authorities said the searches and arrests were conducted in roughly 30 municipalities in Quebec, Ontario and B.C.

Sgt. Daniel Thibaudeau, a provincial police spokesman, said the size of the operation was comparable to Operation Springtime 2001 and Operation SharQC in 2009, both aimed at crippling criminal biker activity.

“An operation of this scope has not been seen in many years,” Thibaudeau said.

After crippling the Hells Angels in Quebec over the past decade, police moved Wednesday to “neutralize” the gang’s underlings who had taken control of the biker gang’s drug operations.

Police arrested 25 people in a sweep in Montreal and across the South Shore. Most of those picked up are Hells Angels associates alleged to have run three drug trafficking cells since a police task force arrested almost all of the Hells Angels full-patch members in Quebec in 2009.

“They’re the people who took the place that had been left by bikers arrested following (police raids in 2001 and 2009),” said Surete du Quebec Lt. Guy Lapointe.

Four hundred officers from the Surete, Montreal police, the RCMP and several local police departments carried out 52 search warrants in 25 municipalities in Montreal and the South Shore.

Police seized more than $300,000 in cash, eight kilograms of cocaine, 24 firearms and other quantities of drugs in a sweep dubbed Operation Carcan.

Police also arrested underlings alleged to have been involved in a fourth drug trafficking network in New Brunswick.

Most of the Quebec suspects were arraigned Wednesday afternoon by video-conference. They face various charges, including drug trafficking, gangsterism, conspiracy and possession of weapons.

One of those arrested is Marc-Andre Lachance, who was charged last month in connection with the assault of an off-duty Montreal police officer in the Mexican resort town of Playa del Carmen in January.

Lachance, 28, and Shane Kenneth Maloney were charged with intimidating a peace officer and conspiracy.

The vacationing police officer was badly beaten up at a bar in the resort town near Cancun.

Over the past 10 years, two major police investigations have brought the Hells Angels in Quebec to their knees.

In 2001, Operation Springtime took flamboyant kingpin Maurice (Mom) Boucher and other members of his Nomads chapter off the streets. In 2009, Operation SharQc netted 130 members of the Hells Angels, including almost all of the full-patch gang members left in Quebec and several associates.

However, last June, a judge released 31 of the suspects in the mega-trial because he didn’t feel they could be tried within a reasonable time frame.

Despite Wednesday’s arrests, police acknowledged that other criminals probably will step forward to fill the newly created void.

“We are going to keep cracking down on people who try to take that part of the market,” Lapointe said, adding that seven police forces were involved in the investigation.

Yves Lavigne, an author who has written several books about the Hells Angels, said Quebec police have to be commended for the way they have relentlessly pursued the biker gang.

“They get the Crown prosecutors involved from the very beginning of the investigation and that minimizes the mistakes,” Lavigne said. “Quebec is the only place in the world where almost every Hells Angel has been in jail over the past decade.”

OTTAWA — A senior Mountie in charge of the force’s wiretap unit has been docked three days pay for altering court evidence to cover up internal concerns about the RCMP’s wiretap methods.

Because Sgt. John Roskam fabricated an internal memo that was presented to the court as genuine, federal prosecutors stayed all charges in what the Mounties billed in 2009 as a major cocaine ring linked to the Hells Angels.

The coverup was exposed during testimony in a northern Ontario court case.

An RCMP wiretap monitor had testified about an internal memo and when defence counsel asked for a copy, Roskam instructed an underling to delete a key portion of the memo before disclosing an electronic copy to the court.

The original briefing note by Sgt. Gabriel DiVito criticized the unit’s practice of “putting away calls,” meaning an intercept monitor would record conversations and listen to them later. But wiretap authorizations often require officers to “live” monitor and when someone other than a named target is on the phone, the police are supposed to hang up.

Roskam deleted the following from the briefing note:

“To refrain from engaging in (putting away calls) as it may be seen as contravening the conditions of a judicial authorization and could jeopardize prosecution.”

The RCMP disciplinary board ruled that “in hindsight, Sgt. Roskam should have explicitly instructed (the underling) to vet the document using a black marker as to make it apparent that passages were deliberately being withheld. Rather, the document was altered in such a fashion that the paragraphs were simply removed without trace.”

“Sgt. Roskam admits that he was negligent in the execution of his duties by authorizing the deletion of passages of Sgt. DiVito’s briefing note, by not properly enquiring about the reason for the request and by ultimately causing an altered document to be passed as genuine before the courts. Charges in project OMAX were stayed as a result,” the disciplinary board ruled.

Roskam, since re-assigned to other duties, admitted to disgraceful conduct under the RCMP Act at a disciplinary hearing held in Ottawa.

Roskam was not charged with any crime.

The disciplinary board noted that the altered memo kept the original date and DiVito’s name in the header.

The board said they established disgraceful conduct because Roskam deliberately undertook a course of action knowing it was wrong.

The board noted that the sergeant has more than 30 years of experience and ought to have known better.

“The consequences of his actions, a stay of proceedings in a major criminal case, were quite extraordinary, and cast the force in a very unfavourable light in the eyes of one of our most important law enforcement partners (the OPP),” the board concluded.

Roskam, who didn’t attend the disciplinary hearing, emailed the board a letter of apology in which he acknowledged his “error.”

The officers on Project OMAX, a 17-month-long joint investigation into cocaine trafficking in Sault Ste. Marie, Ont., were awarded Officers of The Year in 2009.

Back then, the officers were praised for seizing six kilos of cocaine and nabbing five accused, all of whom were let go after the made-up memo derailed the case.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper announced Bob Paulson as the new RCMP Commissioner Wednesday. A 25-year veteran of the force, Commissioner Paulson has busted up biker gangs and tackled homegrown terror. The Post’s Tristin Hopper gives the career highlights.

1977 – 1984: A native of Lachute, Que., Bob Paulson joined the Canadian Forces directly out of high school. Details of his military career are unclear, but it is said he trained as a jet pilot.

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1986 – 1993: After two years at Simon Fraser University — and RCMP basic training — Const. Paulson kicks off his career as an investigator in Chilliwack, B.C., a Fraser Valley city with high rates of drug and property crime.

1993 –1995: Const. Paulson is transferred to the Courtenay/Comox detachment on Vancouver Island.

1995 – 1999: Promoted, now-Corporal Paulson moves to Prince Rupert, B.C., to work in the Northwest District’s unsolved homicide unit. There, he assists in the investigations of a string of murders of young aboriginal women along B.C. Provincial Highway 16, now known as the Highway of Tears.

1999 – 2005: Working primarily out of Vancouver, Cpl. Paulson quickly moves up through the ranks from sergeant to inspector to superintendent. As a major player against B.C. organized crime, Insp. Paulson leads a major assault on the West Coast chapters of the Hells Angels. His tactics against the bikers are unconventional, such as paying $1.1-million to a bouncer to become a police agent and then looking the other way while he repeatedly broke the law — a method a judge upheld.

2005 – 2008: The promising gang-breaker is promoted to superintendent and appointed to RCMP headquarters in Ottawa to head up the Major and Organized Crime, later taking the helm at National Security Criminal Investigations.

2008 – 2010: Moving up to the top levels of the RCMP hierarchy, Insp. Paulson becomes assistant commissioner of National Security Criminal Investigations, one of Canada’s leading anti-terror positions. In January 2009, Assistant Comm. Paulson launches a 40- to 45-member Alberta-based anti-terror team to guard against al Qaeda-style terrorists and homegrown radicals. During the four-month-long abduction of UN envoy Robert Fowler by al Qaeda in 2009, Assistant Comm. Paulson is accused of bullying Mr. Fowler’s wife by telling her no ransom money would be paid. He denies the charge.

Since November 2010: A few months after questioning the leadership of then-Commissioner William Elliott, Deputy Commissioner Raf Souccar — the executive in charge of federal and international policing — is sidelined and replaced with Assistant Comm. Paulson. In April, he is part of a team of five police chiefs who travel to Afghanistan to help co-ordinate the 950-person contingent of police and army trainers who will replace the current military mission.

VANCOUVER — Just weeks before notorious B.C. skipper John Philip Stirling was caught near Colombia on a boat full of cocaine, he sent his neighbour in Chase — a community in B.C.’s Shuswap region — photos of himself lying on the floor beside a giant pile of money.

In the accompanying email, Stirling told Shawn Martin that he wouldn’t repay cash he owed him despite being flush after a recent trip to the South American cocaine centre.

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Bizarre details of Stirling’s feud with his neighbours, Martin and his mother Myrna Beckman, over loans totalling $30,000 are laid out in a suit and counter-suit filed in August and September in Kamloops Supreme Court and obtained the Vancouver Sun.

Stirling was arrested by the U.S. Coast Guard on Oct. 18 just north of Colombia with 400 kilograms of cocaine secreted aboard his sailboat. He is currently detained in a Miami Detention Centre where he told officials “there was nothing wrong with cocaine trafficking and that the United States should mind its own business.”

“He further remarked that if Canada didn’t have such high taxes, (he and his co-accused) could get legitimate jobs.”

If allegations in the B.C. court documents are accurate, some in the town of 2,500 were aware of Stirling’s plan to import cocaine.

Martin and Beckman, who live down the road from Stirling and his wife Marlene, say in their court claim they heard at a barbecue last March “that the plaintiff John Stirling was in Colombia setting up a massive cocaine deal.”

Martin and Beckman said their efforts to get repayment on several loans to the Stirlings were met with threats and harassment.

They also said accusations by the Stirlings that the neighbours were the aggressors in the dispute are ridiculous — Martin has dwarfism and gets around with crutches and a wheelchair; his mother, 63, is his caregiver.

Both Martin and Beckman declined to comment to the Sun because their case is before the courts. Marlene Stirling did not return calls.

The documents show that Stirling, a 60-year-old convicted cocaine trafficker, struck first against his neighbours, filing a suit on Aug. 29 asking for $10 million in damages.

Stirling said in a brief synopsis that over the last two years, his disabled neighbour and mom have threatened the Stirlings “with bodily harm and death.”

“The defendants have caused travel to become necessary from Colombia for John Stirling at great expense and loss from work to protect his family . . . The defendants have or have attempted to hire Hells Angels to cause murder or physical harm to the plaintiffs and have made statements by phone and email of that intent,” the Stirling claim said.

The neighbours fired back in a detailed defence filed Sept. 14, denying all the allegations and making a counter-claim.

They said that, unlike Stirling, they have no criminal record and no connection to the notorious biker gang.

“The defendants do not know any Hells Angels or Hells Angels associates and have never had dealings with them or hired them to do anything,” Martin and Beckman said, adding the only information they have about the Angels came from the Stirlings themselves.

“The plaintiff Marlene Stirling also told the defendants that two Hells Angels members sat at her kitchen table and had coffee on multiple different times,” the documents said.

They said they learned in an Internet search of Stirling’s 2001 bust on his fishing boat, the Western Wind, with 2.5 tonnes of cocaine owned by the Hells Angels. He was never charged.

Tensions escalated between the former friends in August, when Stirling “was back from Colombia and was bragging that he had two suitcases full of money containing in excess of $200,000,” the mother-son team said.

Martin fired off an email, “asking John to pay the rest of the money the plaintiffs owed the defendants for loans from June 1, 2007, to Feb. 23, 2011.”

On Aug. 23, Stirling sent his neighbours “an email with a picture of him laying on the floor of his Adams’ Lake residence with a pile of money in front of him, holding a piece of paper with Aug. 19, 2011, written on it,” the claim said.

The email said: “I told you if you waited you would have got paid, but since you didn’t, you will never receive a dime and everyone else has been paid back for their investment but you.”

They said Stirling warned them that he would go to court and ruin them if they didn’t back off.

“The defendants have videotape evidence of the plaintiff John Stirling threatening to kill more than one person at gunpoint,” the documents said.

“On Sept. 10, 2011, the defendants were informed that the plaintiff John Stirling has been seeking to hire people to burn down the defendants’ house and cause physical harm to them.”

Martin and Beckman said “a man calling himself Ryan showed up at the defendants’ residence wearing a black leather jacket with a Hells Angel patch and was looking for the plaintiff John Stirling because John apparently owed this guy Ryan money.”

Martin said in the court statement that he called Stirlings’ house and warned Marlene that someone was looking for John “and that he sounded really p—ed off.”